1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display control apparatus and a display control method for displaying images, a program used for the display control method, and a storage medium for storing the program.
2. Description of the Related Art
As an image display method adopted in liquid crystal displays of digital cameras, video cameras, and the like, a thumbnail display method is known. In this method, a screen is divided into a plurality of areas, in each of which an image (thumbnail) reduced either one of a still image and a representative image of a moving image which are recorded on a recording medium is placed. By viewing a multi-display screen displayed by the thumbnail display method, an operator can easily search from still images or moving images recorded on a recording medium for a desired image.
However, in such a thumbnail display method, because images are reduced in size one by one to create their thumbnails and the created thumbnails are sequentially displayed in areas on a screen, if the number of thumbnails to be displayed on one screen becomes large, the processing time required to complete the thumbnail display for one screen will be longer. Particularly, in recent years, recording media have increased in capacity and the number of recordable images has also increased, so that the number of reduced images to be displayed on one screen has been increasing. Thus, an efficient display method for eliminating the problem of longer time to display images is needed.
Therefore, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-231005 proposes a method for determining a thumbnail to be displayed first on a multi-display screen on the basis of an image being displayed on a screen or an operator's operation. For example, there is a method for, when a multi-display screen is started displaying, displaying images beginning with a thumbnail of an image that is displayed just before the multi-display screen is displayed.
However, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-231005, although a thumbnail to be displayed first on a multi-display screen can be changed from a default thumbnail, once display of the multi-display screen starts, thumbnails are displayed in succession beginning with an image that a storage medium stores just after (or immediately before) an image first displayed as a thumbnail. Therefore, the larger the number of thumbnails to be displayed on one screen is, the longer the processing time becomes, so that disadvantageously, it takes time for an operator to grasp images on a multi-display screen.
In addition, for example, if the operator cannot find a desired image on the multi-display screen, since many thumbnails are displayed on the multi-display screen and then the screen goes to a next multi-display screen, it takes much longer time for the operator to grasp the images.
This problem arises also in a case where thumbnails are divided into groups and then displayed. That is, until all thumbnails in one group are displayed, any one of thumbnails in a next group is not displayed. Therefore, an operator cannot make an estimate of what images a group to be displayed next to the group being displayed includes, so that the operator cannot view the images efficiently.